


The Beautiful Horror

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: Greek Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, And they're going on a ROAD TRIP, Don't ask me where they're going, Gen, Or where in America they are, Roadtrip, They're human and have always been human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Bring back the head of that whore slut bitch Miz Lucy'. So that is precisely what Percy set out to do - albeit with the help of his brand new half-sister and half-brother. After all, the Family sticks together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beautiful Horror

Ernie drove through the first night. He drove like he hated the car from the bonnet down to the axels, as well as everyone in it and in its way. Percy found himself clutching his side of the vehicle and damn near shrieking through his teeth several times at every near miss or brush with death. Theodora, somehow, managed to remain folded up in the backseat and sleep through all of Ernie's driving, besides the impromptu performance Percy was giving her.

"She's travelled with me before," was all the explanation Ernie gave, offering Percy a swig from his hip flask with one hand and steering haphazardly with the other.

Theodora slept right up until Ernie stopped the car in the early morning by the side of a field, leapt out of the vehicle and over the fence before Percy could ask what was wrong and set off across the grass with a whoop. And at a hell of a pace, too. Percy was still staring after him when the sister started unfolding herself from the car and he had to shut his mouth quick.

Theodora was a big woman. He'd never known that from the few photos he'd seen of her: she was always shot head and shoulders, or if it was a full photo she was always standing alone with no one to compare her great height to. He wondered if she looked quite so tall in normal women's clothes; the trousers only emphasised her long legs and the hat she was putting on right now probably added an extra few inches.

He watched her walk a little way off, groan and stretch with the tiniest of creaks. She even moved like a man, he found himself noticing. There was no unconscious sway of her hips, no little steps that women had to take in their heeled shoes but a proper stride. From behind she'd fool anyone. And, he thought as she turned to walk back, she'd probably be able to manage it from the front too, at a distance. The way the shirt hung on her suggested she didn't have much of anything in the way of hips or breasts, and the rolled up sleeves served to show how thick her arms were.

He looked away before she could think he was staring at her, shut up some part of his brain that was screaming that he'd been ogling his new half-sister for god's sake what's _wrong_ with you, and turned back to watch the speck that was Ernie. Damn, that guy could run! "I've got to ask," he managed, "what's up with him?"

"Ernie's always preferred wide open spaces to the city." She'd reached the car by now, not bothering to look in the direction her brother was speeding but reaching in through the still open door. "He was born and bred in the countryside. He pretends to like staying put for Zach, but I reckon he's only truly happy when he's on the move. He never could stand to be cooped up."

Percy looked from her back to Ernie's far off shape. There was something about the man's speed that just drew his eyes back time and again. "Yeah, alright, I get that…but why the running?"

She looked up from the thing she'd pulled out of her jacket as she slammed the door. "As I said, he's on the move. He had to be very quick on his feet when he was a child, now he misses it. There's not a lot of places he can let loose in the city." She held out the thing – a cigarette case – to him.

Percy considered refusing, but it'd been a long time in between smokes and he'd surely never taste anything this expensive again – so, alright, he nodded. He even accepted a light for the thing. They smoked in silence and she blew smoke rings.

God, even her smoke rings were perfect. Her hands, looking back on his evaluation, might give the game away after all; they were big but slender and obviously female. She'd have to wear gloves to complete the illusion.

"How long have you known about me?" he made himself ask.

She finished the latest ring. "Phoh. Officially? Since Zach sent for us yesterday morning and told us about your damn fool bet. Don't look at me like that," she added, even though she could barely have caught a glimpse of his glare before he stopped it. "It was a stupid wager, and you know it. _Un_ officially – well." She blew another ring. "I can't speak for Ernie, but I found out a few years back, now. Ever since _he_ ," she jabbed a thumb at her brother's far off form, "and Ollie and Tessa showed up, I've developed an interest in what - our father-"

She glared at him now, perhaps daring him to point out that she'd clearly been about to say 'my father'. Percy kept his mouth buttoned tight and blew the smoke out of his nose instead.

She sighed, and went on. "What he gets up to, who he spends his time with and who he leaves behind. But I wasn't deliberately looking for you. One day I found a letter in Zach's desk, from your mother. She'd worked out who he was by then. I mean, he's been in the papers often enough. She was smart enough not to try and blackmail him. She made it clear she wasn't asking for money, she was doing fine, she just wanted to tell him about you."

"Me?" His mother, doing something like that…she'd known, she'd known all along and she never told him, she told _that guy_ all about him but she didn't even have the decency to do the same for her own son… "What about me?"

"Many things." She twirled her wrist as she elaborated, leaving spirals of smoke. "Your name, how old you were, how you were so bright and doing so well in school. She said she enclosed a picture but I couldn't find it, Zach must have taken it with him. I actually passed through your neighbourhood a couple of times since then, I suppose-" She actually smiled, she fucking smiled, shaking her head. "I suppose I was trying to catch a glimpse of my latest sibling. Or…I'd seen how he treated Harriet; I've kept an eye on how he treats the mothers of his other children. But last night was the first time I ever actually laid eyes on her, or on you."

Percy looked at her, a woman who'd been well fed enough to reach the full height her heritage had granted her, wearing old men's clothes but smoking her expensive cigarette. "You knew about me. All that time, you knew. Dammit, you could have done something, you could've fucking helped us-"

"No. I couldn't have." He hadn't noticed until now how soft her eyes were getting until they became rock hard once more. She brought the cigarette nearly to her lips again, seemed disgusted with it all of a sudden and threw it to the dirt only half smoked, straightened up and strode away.

* * *

 

Theodora drove for the rest of the morning while Ernie snored in the backseat. She drove calm and straight with hardly a bump and barely took her eyes off the road in five hours, from what Percy could tell. When Ernie woke up and declared he was starving he opened up the hamper and passed around sandwiches and soda, although the soda was unpleasantly warm, and then a bag of candy.

They stopped once or twice for a restroom break. Theodora, naturally, walked far off each time to take care of her own business. The second time it was Ernie who leaned against the car beside him and waited for the third member of the group to come back. Ernie didn't smoke at all - "Bad for my lungs," he said, thumping his chest - but he still had cigarettes to offer.

Where Theodora was tall, Ernie was short. He'd taken great delight in stringing Percy along last night before telling him his actual age, but come on – how was he supposed to know that the 'kid' was actually six years older than him? His suit looked much newer than his half-sister's, and expensive too. It also looked like he hadn't taken it off for days and yet somehow it still managed to be stylish.

"Did _you_ know about me?" Percy asked him.

"No, but I wasn't exactly surprised when Zach told us. There's an awful lot of us illegitimates showing up these days. You're eighteen, right?" He grinned when Percy indicated that, yeah, he had turned eighteen a little while back, right enough. "You'd probably have been invited to join the Family soon anyway."

"I thought Zachariah had decided not to adopt any more of his bastard children?" Percy said, stubbing out the cigarette on a fence post. The press had had a field day with that one, after the public rows between man and wife.

"Yep," Ernie said, with the shit-eating grin of one long acknowledged and favoured, even by the dreaded Harriet. Percy had heard the rumours that she liked him more than her own sons, although admittedly that didn't sound like a very difficult thing to accomplish. "But put it this way: if you manage to pull this off, come back a hero? You'll be brought into the…middle circle, shall we say? Not officially the Family, but no one'll ever be able to touch you again. Not even the higher ups. That's the compromise Zachariah made with Harriet, after what happened to Edouarde."

Percy had also heard rumours about that particular Edouarde, the owner of the Bacchanal. Rumours that didn't paint the Family matriarch in a very good light. Looking back on Theodora's attitude, he reckoned he could understand it a bit more; she may have thought it better for him to remain unacknowledged if that also meant being out of the sight of Harriet. But still…

"It's just as well you agreed to this wager," Ernie went on, pushing himself upright and shading his eyes. Percy turned to see Theodora wending her slow way back to them, taking her time to look around at the lay of the land.

"Really? Your sister seems to think it a damn fool one."

"Thea's right," Ernie told him, actually losing the smile for once. "Even with our help, which you desperately need, it could go wrong. Really wrong. But, see, that's the point; you do this, you bring back proof - that's your rite of passage, that's your ticket into the Family. If you hadn't made the bet, they'd just have found something else for you to do. Something worse."

Percy thought about this. "So, now anyone who wants to get acknowledged, they're not just accepted…they have to do some crazy shit like this?"

"Oh, yeah."

"That's…that's pretty fucked up, Ernie."

"That's the Family, little brother." Ernie cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to his sister, asking if he should drive for the afternoon.

* * *

 

They hid the car quite thoroughly in the trees near the bank before they stepped on board. Ernie was far better with the boat than he was with the car, and they were soon cruising down the river at a fair speed without making Percy clutch the side in ill-disguised terror.

Theodora spent most of the evening lying on the bed in the cabin with a bowl on the floor for her to throw up in. When they moored for the night she refused to eat anything, scowling as they finished off the sandwiches and Ernie made a deliberate show of enjoying them. Eventually he turned concerned and crouched by the bed to hold a cigarette to her lips, dabbing her forehead with his free hand and whispering things to her.

Percy sat on the other side of the cabin on the blanket he'd laid out and just _watched_ them, sucking a piece of candy. He wondered if either of them had had the comfort of their mother at their bedside when they were sick, and figured probably not. Rich people did things differently, they left that kind of thing to nannies. And anyway, Thea's mother had died when she was very little, hadn't she? He remembered reading something about it, ages ago.

"Thea, we should tell him," Ernie was saying.

"No. No, I don't want to," she said, weak after all her throwing up. She sounded younger, almost like the sick little girl Percy had imagined. She pushed Ernie's hand away but he moved it right back, cupping her chin.

"Thea, come on. He's going to learn anyway, it might as well be now."

"No, Ernie, it really doesn't have to be now."

"You know it does."

"You just like seeing me as uncomfortable as possible, don't you, you little shit?" But she was smiling now and her voice was less girly, more amused.

"Of course." Ernie was smiling again as he slid an arm under her shoulders, with some work. "I mean, how long has it been since something was actually your fault?"

"Not long enough." Theodora pushed herself up with his help and took the cigarette in her own hand, settling her back against the cabin wall and meeting Percy's eyes. "All right, then. Percy. Zach sent us to help you with this mission to bring back 'that whore slut Mizz Lucy's head' for Mister Paulo, because it was pretty clear you'd never manage it on your own."

"Thanks," Percy said, crunching candy.

"But, I also agreed to help because…lord." She rubbed sweat from her forehead and tried again. "Because, like Ernie said, this is my fault. Why she is the way she is. If I can't clean up my own mess, I can at least help you to do it."

"Your fault?" Of all of the Family, Theodora was by far the last one of them he would expect to have any connection with 'Mizz Lucy'. "How does that work?"

"She was my secretary, about five years back. Before…" She sighed and blew out a river of smoke. "She was a good worker, conscientious and professional and, oh, everything I could wish for. I knew she had two younger sisters to support – the parents were dead, they died in the flu epidemic – so I paid her extra, and she earned it. Then, one evening a few days before Christmas, we were catching up on some work in my office in the main house, Zach called me down to the party for a few minutes to make a good show, so I left Lucy to it."

The woman sighed, running her fingers through her sweaty hair. "When I came back, I found-"

"Mizz Lucy and dear old Uncle Simon," Ernie said from his seat on the floor, clearly grinning despite himself, "with him hiking her up against one wall, and both of them quite busy fucking each other's brains out."

Percy whistled, high to low. "Doesn't sound like there was much for them to be fucking out in the first place. I mean-"

"My uncle and I don't get on," Theodora cut in, clenching the blanket with her free hand so hard the knuckle turned white. All of her had gone pale, not just from the travel sickness. "We never have. I told him to get out of the house, now, and if he didn't I'd tell his wife why. He went. Then I started on Lucy. She broke down and it turned out this had been going on for the better part of two months. She passed on a lot of information that…"

She wiped her forehead again. She sucked on the cigarette for far too long, and breathed out more smoke than it seemed possible for a human body to hold. "I have a bad temper. I said a lot of things I regret now. I told her to get out too, she was fired. When she protested I threw a lamp at her and called the servants to throw her out, not just out of the house but off the grounds. She barely had time to grab her coat." The free hand was worrying the blanket, picking and pulling at it. "I assumed, and I suppose Lucy did too, otherwise she'd not have gone so easy in the end, that Simon was waiting for her and would take her with him. We both thought wrong. And it was starting to snow."

Percy had been caught outside in the snow, once, and that had been with all the protection a concerned mother had been able to knit for her son. How much protection could a single coat give? "She made it through the night, though."

"She paid for it. Frostbite. Cost her at least two of her toes, a little finger, but it was her face that was the real blow. She had some reason to be proud of it, before." God only knew what Theodora was really seeing now, with those big grey eyes wreathed in the smoke of her cigarette. "She lost pretty much all of her nose, part of her lips."

"All this is what we learned afterwards," Ernie said, at last deciding to relieve his sister. "In the following days, when everyone had calmed down, we tried to track her down, offer her something in the way of compensation. But she'd disappeared. Just took her sisters and upped and vanished, the rent unpaid and everything. And that was the last we heard of Mizz Lucy – until the news came from Kisthene this spring."

"And now I've said I'll kill her," he muttered. He felt sick. He'd thought this strange woman, this 'whore slut' encroaching on Paulo's business, would be just like him, just as small and petty and mean and no one would miss her. He'd thought, and he'd known nothing.

"You have to," Theodora said, sucking with desperation on the last of her smoke. "You'd be doing her a favour, Percy. She's crazy. Insane. Some of the things I've found out, you think they can't be true but they are. She's gone mad. There's nothing anyone can do for her, except to put her out of her misery. Even if it has to be you who does it, and not me."

*

They moored the boat on the fourth morning, walked all day and somehow ended up inside a pretty large estate – "Ah, beautiful Hesperides!" Ernie sang out - as dusk began to roll in. Percy wondered if they should be here, and wondered even more as they walked up to the grand old house, out of which was spilling – girls.

A whole lot of beautiful, black girls.

Ernie was almost carried on a wave of plump arms into the house, laughing and shouting. Thea made her own way to the front door unmolested but actually smiling for a change, leaving him to trail behind and constantly look over his shoulder at the fabulous gardens they were leaving outside.

The house was just as sumptuous inside and filled with flowers everywhere. Fake silk ones shared the same vases as the ones cut and taken from the gardens, every piece of furniture seemed to be carved with them, they were in every picture on the walls and they filled all the spaces in between the dark whirlwind as the girls sat them down and fetched them food and booze. Percy must have been introduced to some of them at some point but they really all meshed together, grinning and eating with their fingers and knocking back their home brewed hooch. He'd never been around black people this…exuberant, before. He was pretty sure they were enjoying his not-knowing-what-the-fuck-to-think-of-all-this expression, and he did honestly try to get it off his face but…really? A group of black girls, owning a house like this?

Of course, they didn't own it, not officially, as Thea told him when he escaped to the veranda. "On paper it's Harriet's property, but she never comes here anymore. She lets them live here free of charge, and no one can touch them."

Percy struggled to join up the two pictures, the literal wicked stepmother that his father and, presumably, his step-sister had hidden him from, and the generous benefactor who let all these women stay from the goodness of her heart. Of course, no one was all one thing.

Except for Paulo; he was rotten to the core.

"We told you," Thea said, as business-like as if she'd never been boat sick for a day and a half, "that first night, that we'd help you win this stupid bet. Well, we've been talking to the girls and they can help us further. They don't know precisely where Lucy is hiding, but," she went on, raising her finger to stop his words, "they know of someone who does. They'll take you to them tomorrow. I should warn you, though, you may have to get rough. Your hosts won't be very cooperative."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Once you've learned her location," she went on, looking out over the dark gardens, "we'll give you the things you'll need. Also, it might help if you ask the girls if you can borrow their ice box for the journey back home. They keep a small one for picnics. It should be just the right size."

"I'll do that," he said, embarrassed that he hadn't even considered how he'd get a severed head back home in the height of summer, without it starting to rot. Yet another thing he hadn't thought through when he'd agreed to Paulo's wager. It was just as well he had Thea to think for him.

He stood and watched her smoke. After four days of increasingly sweaty men's clothes it was as much a shock to see her wearing a dress - and actually wearing it well, even if it was rather short on her - as her original getup had been. She moved like a woman now, even smoked like one, and she'd done something to her hair so there was more of it. Nothing much had changed, apart from the clothes, and yet everything had changed. And still, somehow, she managed to be the same person, whatever clothes she was wearing and whatever gender she appeared to be, if only at a distance.

"What are you two doing out here?" Ernie asked, pouring himself out onto the veranda as well. "You're missing all the fun!"

"Seems like you're having enough fun for both of us," he replied, and then started as Ernie slung an arm around his neck. "Get off, you're heavy," he said, half-heartedly, but he slung his own arm around Ernie's waist and accepted the glass shoved at him. For home brew, it was pretty good; they had the advantage of having actual fruit to distil.

"Hey, Thea, I was thinking, we should bring the girls up to the city; they'd have a ball at Edouarde's place!"

"Harriet wouldn't be pleased."

"I know; Edouarde'll love it!" Thea smiled at that, but she still shook her head. "Oh, come _on_ , Sophie, it'll be great, you know it! They never get to go anywhere!"

"Maybe they're happy here, away from the city?" That cut Ernie off. He muttered and sat down all at once, pulling Percy down after him. "And don't drink too much, I need you sober to send a message in the morning, tell Zach we've arrived."

"Oh, _Sophie-"_

" _And_ you need to start making plans with Percy about how he's actually going to pull this off without getting killed."

Ernie actually stuck his tongue out at her. "You're a horrible sister." Thea just laughed, strode down the steps and into the garden. "She isn't really," he went on, turning to look Percy in the eye, "she's my favourite."

"I believe you. I really do."

"You'd better." Ernie tossed back the last of his hooch and licked his lips. "Word of advice. Whatever plan you cook up, to get into Mizz Lucy's lair? It might be better if you leave Thea out of that bit." Just like Thea, he raised a finger to stop Percy speaking, this time about how stupid that was. "I know, she's come all this way to help you and trust me, she can take care of herself, but seriously? She gets injured, even a scratch, Zach'll _flip._ He adores her. She's his golden girl." To Ernie's credit, he only sounded the tiniest bit bitter, because after all he loved her too. "He won't take too kindly to you, if his favourite daughter gets maimed on this quest of yours."

"I should think that's up to Thea, not me," he replied, finishing off the last of his drink as well. "And if he's so concerned, he shouldn't have let her go." And he should have loved all his children equally, not one above all the others, even if that one was Thea. He watched her shape as she moved further into the garden, drifting a grey river behind her, and felt he was beginning to understand why - in her photos - she was always alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, this isn't the end of the story! The second half of this will be up soon enough!
> 
> Yes, I have read at least some of the 'Percy Jackson' series. (And hated the film.) I still couldn't resist.
> 
> I'm really giving Athena way too much credit; in at least one version of the myth she cursed Medusa, then willingly gave Perseus aid in killing her. Then, to add insult to injury, she stuck the poor girl's head on her shield to scare everybody. That is, if you don't take into consideration other interpretations of the 'aegis'...
> 
> Anyway, she's marginally nicer in this because she's human, and humans can only get away with so much callousness.
> 
> Sophie is Thea's middle name; only Ernie and her father are allowed to call her by it.
> 
> The Garden of the Hesperides was generally considered to have been located in North Africa in the myths, so my nymphs are African-American. They're the remaining black servants and their children who used to work in the house before Harriet inherited it. It's linked with bad memories for her, so she turned it over to them and they made it into a paradise. I know this is very unlikely to have happened in real life, but let's make THIS the fantastical element in the story.
> 
> Please don't ask me precisely where in America this is set, I haven't a CLUE.
> 
> Since Athena was on bad terms with Poseidon, the god of the sea, I though it would be funny to have Thea get terribly, horribly sea sick whenever she's on a boat.
> 
> And yes, practically everyone (except Ernie) smokes. Come on, it's the 1920s. To be fair Ernie is trying to get Thea to give up.


End file.
